Triumph Reign (The Callistra Chronicles #3)

ONE

PART ELEVEN — SOLDIER

An army marches forth, and Pasiphae of Eo waits ready.

Chapter One

War on Callistra had been brewing for a long, long time.

At present, it had been brewing for twenty-four hours, since Morgana first launched her magical attacks onto Eo from afar, setting homes and streets ablaze. In the dead of night, the witches of Medeis had seen Callistra become a world of only land, smashed together in a fit of rage and gore. The vast oceans that required days of journey to cross were no more; enemies were placed within shooting range. It was a moment of dumbfound, a moment wherein every ruler except Morgana was slow to act in their utter disbelief that their world could really have changed so severely.

So Queen Morgana Sangallard had made the first move. She had set her fires with calculation, throwing attacks across the border with a callous sort of grace. There was no doubt that this sort of magic presently invading the witchlands was something of Morgana's own making. No one except a royal could have created fire that took on a life of its own—burning even as its oxygen was taken, burning even through glass, burning through the earth and soil as if it wished to join the molten core of the natural world.

The fires were frightening, but the anticipation that boiled among the witches was worse. No soldiers had yet marched from Khotadi into Eo.

What could Morgana possibly be waiting for? From the intel that they had gathered, the witches knew she had a capable army, a personal force, a royal guard. Morgana had already rerouted the roads with her fires and devastated the forests until every tree was either uprooted or burned to the ground. She had created a casualties list in Eo that was getting longer with the more the deadly fires raged, and yet there was not a hint of life along the borders of Khotadi. At this point, the absence of the Unseelie forces was more abnormal than their presence.

The witches manning the border of Eo were so antsy that they peered out from behind their makeshift barricades every few minutes. Shields of cheap aluminium lined the coastal field. There was not a gap left unwatched, but it was all a matter of posturing. If—when—the Unseelie came, these aluminium barricades would do nothing.

The witches hadn't realised how unprepared they were until the threat was imminent: all the weapon-making, the shelter-building, the mental training—they became meaningless the moment Morgana launched her first attack. The fae could take the witches' magic, but the witches could not do the reverse. There was nothing to do except wait. Wait, wait, quietly in the absolute vacuum of noise, and steel themselves into holding a last stand that would be worthy of remembrance by their descendants.

A minuscule strip of water was all that remained of the colossal ocean once freely flowing here. Once or twice in the silence, there were phantom sightings of movement. Yells would reverberate through the scene, panic that perhaps the undines would be the first wave in this war, but then there would be nothing again, no flash of green-blue-white, and the feeble barricade settled still.

The witches waited, and waited, even as their brethren succumbed to an unstoppable fire a distance away; even as day came and brought the strange, incongruous feeling of sunshine mixed with warfare. They stood firm when night fell again, but all that gleamed on the other side of the stream was the iron gate which marked where Khotadi began and where Medeis ended: not a hint of movement or a flash of silver-hued wings.

The gate was open. It had slowly, slowly set itself ajar when Callistra collided and every neon light behind it had gone out in a flash. The dark and foreboding kingdom stretched into the clouds, but nothing had rushed outward.